# Understanding and Meeting Practitioner Needs When Measuring Representational Harms Caused by LLM-Based Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04482 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04482/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 93 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [DeBERTa: Decoding-enhanced BERT with Disentangled Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03654/) (2020)
- [Llama Guard: LLM-based Input-Output Safeguard for Human-AI Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06674/) (2023)
- [Language (Technology) is Power: A Critical Survey of "Bias" in NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14050/) (2020)
- [StereoSet: Measuring stereotypical bias in pretrained language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09456/) (2020)
- [Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.07187/) (2016)
- [Quantifying Language Models' Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design or: How I learned to start worrying about prompt formatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11324/) (2023)
- [CrowS-Pairs: A Challenge Dataset for Measuring Social Biases in Masked Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00133/) (2020)
- [BBQ: A Hand-Built Bias Benchmark for Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08193/) (2021)
- [Bias and Fairness in Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00770/) (2023)
- [The Woman Worked as a Babysitter: On Biases in Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01326/) (2019)
- [ToxiGen: A Large-Scale Machine-Generated Dataset for Adversarial and Implicit Hate Speech Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09509/) (2022)
- [BOLD: Dataset and Metrics for Measuring Biases in Open-Ended Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11718/) (2021)
- [On Measuring Social Biases in Sentence Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.10561/) (2019)
- [Measurement and Fairness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05511/) (2019)
- [Improving fairness in machine learning systems: What do industry practitioners need?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05239/) (2018)
- [Why We Need New Evaluation Metrics for NLG](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06875/) (2017)
- [HateBERT: Retraining BERT for Abusive Language Detection in English](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12472/) (2020)
- [Societal Biases in Language Generation: Progress and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04054/) (2021)
- [A New Generation of Perspective API: Efficient Multilingual Character-level Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11176/) (2022)
- [Repairing the Cracked Foundation: A Survey of Obstacles in Evaluation Practices for Generated Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06935/) (2022)
- [Intrinsic Bias Metrics Do Not Correlate with Application Bias](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15859/) (2020)
- [Harms of Gender Exclusivity and Challenges in Non-Binary Representation in Language Technologies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.12084/) (2021)
- [On Measures of Biases and Harms in NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.03362/) (2021)
- [On the Intrinsic and Extrinsic Fairness Evaluation Metrics for Contextualized Language Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13928/) (2022)
- [You don't need a personality test to know these models are unreliable: Assessing the Reliability of Large Language Models on Psychometric Instruments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09718/) (2023)
- [Evaluating Evaluation Metrics: A Framework for Analyzing NLG Evaluation Metrics using Measurement Theory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14889/) (2023)
- [Quantifying Social Biases Using Templates is Unreliable](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.04337/) (2022)
- [Exploring How Machine Learning Practitioners (Try To) Use Fairness Toolkits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06922/) (2022)
- [Deconstructing NLG Evaluation: Evaluation Practices, Assumptions, and Their Implications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06828/) (2022)
- [Towards AI Accountability Infrastructure: Gaps and Opportunities in AI Audit Tooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17861/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Rigor in AI: Doing Rigorous AI Work Requires a Broader, Responsible AI-Informed Conception of Rigor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14652/) (2025)
- [Measurement as Bricolage: Examining How Data Scientists Construct Target Variables for Predictive Modeling Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.02819/) (2025)
- [Guardrail-Agnostic Societal Bias Evaluation in Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29590/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The NLP research community has made publicly available numerous instruments for measuring representational harms caused by large language model (LLM)-based systems. These instruments have taken the form of datasets, metrics, tools, and more. In this paper, we examine the extent to which such instruments meet the needs of practitioners tasked with evaluating LLM-based systems. Via semi-structured interviews with 12 such practitioners, we find that practitioners are often unable to use publicly available instruments for measuring representational harms. We identify two types of challenges. In some cases, instruments are not useful because they do not meaningfully measure what practitioners seek to measure or are otherwise misaligned with practitioner needs. In other cases, instruments - even useful instruments - are not used by practitioners due to practical and institutional barriers impeding their uptake. Drawing on measurement theory and pragmatic measurement, we provide recommendations for addressing these challenges to better meet practitioner needs.